Actually, there is no scarcity in this material world. We have created scarcity by our mismanagement.

Sri Caitanya-caritamrta, Adi-lila 7.106-107
by His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada
San Francisco, February 13, 1967

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UN chief calls on US to suspend biofuel mandate

By James Murray | August 10 2012 | businessGreen
Head of UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation warns booming biofuel industry is contributing to looming food crisis.

The US should immediately suspend its binding biofuel mandates to help head off a looming food crisis, according to the director-general of the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation.

Writing in the Financial Times today, José Graziano da Silva made his most outspoken intervention to date in the food versus fuel debate, warning that drought conditions in the US and soaring prices for staple crops meant the onus was on governments to suspend legally binding targets for biofuels that have been widely blamed for increasing demand for food crops such as corn.

“With world prices of cereals rising, the competition between the food, feed and fuel sectors for crops such as maize, sugar and oilseeds is likely to intensify,” he wrote. “One way to alleviate some of the tension would be to lower or temporarily suspend the mandates on biofuels.

“At the moment, the renewable energy production in the US is reported to have reached 15.2 billion gallons in 2012, for which it used the equivalent of some 121.9 million tonnes or about 40 per cent of US maize production. An immediate, temporary suspension of that mandate would give some respite to the market and allow more of the crop to be channelled towards food and feed uses.”

The UN’s stance will increase pressure on the Obama administration to take action to ease pressure on food prices following one of the worst droughts in a generation across much of America’s agricultural heartlands.

Corn prices surged again this week and are approaching record highs with analysts anticipating that an update on maize production from the US Department of Agriculture will confirm farmers have been hard hit by the drought conditions.

Food producers have already called on the administration to remove or relax its biofuel mandates, but a number of influential swing states continue to benefit from the binding targets, while the biofuel industry has argued that any unexpected change to the policy environment will undermine investment in second generation biofuels that are not reliant on food crops.

Senior administration officials indicated that it was highly unlikely they would change the biofuel mandate, arguing that such a move would only have a limited impact on food prices.

source: businessGreen